Hubbard rule voted ho-hum

Dick Hubbard

Aucklanders feel ho-hum about Auckland City Mayor Dick Hubbard, the cereal maker who swept to office eight months ago promising action-based leadership without the aggro of John Banks.

A Herald-DigiPoll survey found 40.2 per cent of people rated his performance as fair and 23.8 per cent said he had done an excellent or good job and 26.1 per cent a poor or bad job.

The survey was taken during last week's stoush between Mr Hubbard and his deputy, Dr Bruce Hucker. In the lead-up to the final budget meeting enormous pressure came on Mr Hubbard to back a $1 million affordable housing package, and control of the $73 million Civic Carpark leaky roof crisis was wrested from him.

Mr Hubbard gained more than 50 per cent of the vote at last October's local body elections to defeat Mr Banks by more than 16,000 votes.

He has had to deal with the loss of the V8 Supercar race and the scare over contaminated soil, and he upset the gay community by signing a letter urging MPs not to support the Civil Union Bill.

Mr Hubbard established a mayoral taskforce on urban design and in the past month the council has introduced rules banning ugly buildings, imposing minimum apartment sizes and protecting thousands of character homes.

He has also sided with the City Vision-Labour grouping to impose a 9.7 per cent rates rise that gives bigger rates rises to Auckland's wealthiest homeowners.

Mr Hubbard said the number of people thinking he had done a good job against a bad job was pretty similar and probably reflected the support he got in October. He said he had taken some pain from the "fairly significant" rates increases.

The survey of 200 people, taken between June 21 and June 26, has a margin of error of plus or minus 6.9 per cent.

How Aucklanders rate Dick Hubbard:

Excellent - 5.2 per cent
Good - 18.6 per cent
Fair - 40.2 per cent
Poor - 14.2 per cent
Bad - 11.9 per cent
Don't know - 9.9 per cent

Source: Herald-DigiPoll